Nothing ‘Semi’ About It
He leaves his east coast home at 11:00 on a Saturday morning, Jeep packed to the gills, cigarettes and cell phone on the seat beside him. Halfway between Biloxi and New Orleans he calls me, his special ring tone jangling me out of a much-needed nap.
“Hey Jill, what road is it I need to take north from 10 to 20?”
“Um hang on,” I struggle for full consciousness as I make my way from my warm bed into the cool living room where my laptop sits. I boot up and launch a mapping program as he makes small talk about the GPS unit he bought and still hasn’t received. The concept of a paper map seems to elude him.
“You need to take Route 49 north to Shreveport, which you’ll pick up near Lafayette. Did you make your hotel reservations yet?”
“No. I hadn’t really thought that far ahead.”
Ah, leave it to that littlest brother of mine to make a three-day road trip without a plan, a map or so much as a phone book. I sigh.
“I’ll make them for you. I’ll call you right back with your confirmation number.”
I make and confirm his hotel reservations with my credit card number (which he will no doubt neglect to change, and I will no doubt never mention to him), call him back and then proceed to provide him company and direction for the next hour via Google Earth’s marvelous satellite technology. Like a traffic-directing angel, I track his route from aerial images, imagining his little red Jeep speeding along the tiny highways and bridges of the southern states.
That afternoon I wonder aloud to my wannabe-boyfriend how he manages to do on a whim what I spent three weeks, countless notes, one Triple-A membership and a couple hundred dollars planning. He responds that his youngest brother finds the world offers him the same limitless good fortune. To a responsible, dependable, plan-it-to-the-T older sibling, an unfairly charmed life appears to be the birthright of the youngest child.
It is late when my brother calls back with a status report and tells me he’s low on gas, so I zoom in on Route 49 looking for a gas station among the rural outposts of northern Louisiana. He calls me back after the fill up so I can talk him through the spaghetti-like maze of Bossier City’s highway system, and it occurs to me that if younger children assume life will just take care of them, it’s probably because older siblings make sure it does. Even when they don’t return the favor by forwarding our mail, paying us back, or remembering our birthdays until weeks later. Why do we do that?
He interrupts my reverie in an uncharacteristic panic as he approaches an unexpected detour.
“Jill-Jill which way do I go?”
“Jill-Jill do I make a left or a right?”
“Jill-Jill this doesn’t look familiar at all should I turn around?”
He continues his rapid-fire Tom-Tom parody until I dissolve in giggles, recovering just in time to save him from a wrong exit. I’m still chuckling hours later when the answer to my question dawns on me.
They are charmed because they are charming.